Dress for you

Month: August 2013

I made this Seriously, it was so long ago that the return address on all my letters was “123 Main Street, Pangaea.”

I don’t think when I made this I really did it justice — the neck yoke is decidedly lopsided:

But I really, really love the fabric. It’s so … Lois Lenski, if that makes any sense.

The back view is … lacking:

I did not do a very good job on the back neck zipper, to put it mildly:

This is another dress I don’t wear very often but can’t seem to get rid of, mostly because I love the fabric so much. Why I think that at some point in the future I will magically find either the time or the ingenuity to change this dress into something else, I don’t know. Perhaps if I were the victim of a shrinking ray, and had to create an entirely new wardrobe of doll-sized clothes? (Because even if a shrinking ray made me Barbie-sized, it would not make me Barbie-proportioned …) Maybe when we have the Star Trek replicators and I can put a snippet of this fabric in one and intone “Dress, full skirt, hat” at it and have a new version in a snap? Both are more plausible than me sitting down and taking this one apart ….

I bought the fabric . (I still haven’t sewn up the other fabric from that post.) I kind of wish I had more of it — I mean, wouldn’t you? I’d also like to have bright orange koi on a gray background, kind of like .

The neck binding is a bit roll-y:

The zipper is nice, though! The pocket lining is just plain off-white batiste.

I think that this fabric fell into the category of “there isn’t possibly enough for a full-skirted dress but I love it so much I will buy it anyway,” and then voila! there was enough for a Heidi. It’s a nice crisp corded cotton with a gorgeous hand. In my opinion, there is not enough corded cotton in the world. Why doesn’t Liberty make corded cotton? I shall write a letter.

The side zip, pretty good:

And the back view.

I wore this one on Sunday with , which are, in my opinion, the coolest and most comfortable ones I’ve ever owned (they seem pricey now but they were on sale a while back):

Amazingly comfortable and really good for those of us with wider feet — they can be adjusted at both the ankle and toe, so you don’t have that thing where your ankles are swimming and your toes are pinched, which is the worst. Highly recommended. I got the black; if there are any in my size left at the end of summer sale I may be tempted to get the brown or even the denim-y blue colorways …

Another . I really love ticking-stripe fabric, and to find it in orange … well, I had to have it:

It turned out to be a very creamsicle-ish dress:

The for this dress did not show the wonky side zip:

I’m not sure what happened with that. Is it just me, or is it harder to find instructions on increasing the waist measurement than it is to find instructions for any other alteration? Is it just assumed to be easy, or does no one but me do it, or what? I find that whenever I have a weird side-seam problem, it’s usually because of some wonky alteration I’ve done. (While looking I did find , though.)

I don’t wear this dress all that often, I’m not sure why. I do love orange …

This is one of the few dresses that I’ve reworked after learning more about the pattern — the first version is . The original neckline was a bit too wide — luckily I had enough extra of this fabric, because the Heidi sews up with virtually nothing.

This dress is just so fun to wear. I like to wear it with .

Side zip, eh. The Heidi side zips are open at the top (go right into the armhole) so it’s important to make sure that you cover the scratchy bits.

And the back:

I realized while getting the next batch of dresses ready for their closeups that whoa, I have made a LOT of Heidis. I don’t think all of them are going to make the Hundred Dresses cut! Maybe I should do a separate series of just Heidis? I’ll try to do at least a roundup. I don’t wear them as much as I used to because they’re not as well-suited for biking (they can be biked in, it’s just not as easy as in a fuller skirt).